David Theison, campus astronomy professor at Maryland College, recently gave a lecture, Sex In Space, in which he passed around an undergarment resembling a pair of pants with not two but four leg holes. This, he said, might be a solution to the problem of couples floating apart during weightless intercourse.

The main thing to remember about sex in space is that no one has ever done it. You heard that they had? It's a myth, says Nasa. You read it on the internet? The text was 'fraudulent'. This fraudulent myth has it that, in 1996, US astronauts carried out sex experiments on the space shuttle: a husband and wife team apparently tested 10 positions, and found that six, including the missionary position, were impossible in zero gravity without assistance from an elastic belt, an inflatable tunnel or a third party.